If electricity isn't trying to get back to ground then why do we ground things?
The ground connection is so that a circuit is solidly
referenced to ground. There are several reasons for this, such as improved protection against lightning strikes and because an ungrounded circuit of any length will set up its own "floating" reference point with respect to ground due to capacitance between the wiring and the earth.
In a system where there is just a single point grounded, no current actually flows to ground through that connection. The ground rod simply insures that the neutral is at zero volts with respect to ground.
When a ground-fault occurs, the current which flows is not just "returning to ground," but is in fact returning to its source. It's just that with the neutral grounded at source, the ground happens to be a convenient path for the current to take.
